Chronicles: Wrath of the Galaxy
by Sidereal Space Seed
Summary: Every galactic cycle, Harbinger awakes. And in the fog of billions of overlapping calculations, he considers. - Little collection of Reapers' memories.
1. Awakening

Hi everyone. :)

Little preamble: English is not my mother language, I'm italian. So, despite my love for this language, it is possible that you will encounter grammatical errors. I put a lot of attention on what I write, but still, I'm not professional yet. I will gladly welcome any suggestions, and corrections (and obviously, constructive criticism!).

I like a creative style of writing, and I hope this won't ruin the reading. If so, please you are free to tell me, and I will write in a more clear way.

I point this out because this is the first time I attempt to publish in English, so this is a bit of a challenge.

That said, I introduce the story: this is a little collection of chapters on the Reapers. I wanted to analyze their characters, their very presence, and what could be their psychology (if they have any). It's a try.

There won't be any spoilers on Mass Effect 3, because I haven't yet started it, I have just finished Mass Effect 2. So I really don't know which end they will face (or Shepard), **BUT** I know of the Leviathan DLC, so probably some details could show up. In any case, I will warn of any spoiler if you have no idea of what is said in that DLC.

What else to say? If you like the "mystery" of the Reapers – the hidden meanings, the possible metaphors with humankind – like me, you might like it. This is not very demanding, it's just free words on "paper".

So. To leave a review will obviously make me happy!

Hope you enjoy :)

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**_1._**

**_Awakening_**

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Resonant in the somber web of space, the voice of primordiality lulled cold and vast minds.

The clean fabric of the cosmos flickered on motionless exoskeletons, a glacial black that didn't know of the caress of light. The distant stars, invisible at those sidereal distances, didn't dare to glance, to meet the unknown fauces of a rage bred by millennia. Planets with their motions nothing knew of the dour dusk of that icy, cosmic empathy, quivering and synthetic.

In the eternal night void of asters, rich of the untamable veil of nothingness between the galaxies, the Immortals stood.

And in the chagrin of an existence of questions to which they didn't feel the urge to answer, the creatures stirred relentless, kilometric tentacles. Watchful eyes, alert as the inexorable repetition of cycles, surveyed the oceanic path without roads that led to the asters to them so hostile.

Distant lives loathed them without recognize them, oblivious being looked at them without understand them, laying silent demands to the horizon of the universe that they, indomitable perfectionists, grazed with the quiet exercise of conspiracy.

Majestic fingers, invisible in such oblivion without gravity, contract on themselves, in an awaited awakening, dreaded, needful.

The spires of their shells drew lines in space while they shifted, conscious anew, turning to watch far afield. Tiny gleams warmed up the perimeters of their hulls, segmented the frames of the myth that one day the organics would call Death.

And that day wasn't so far, uncoiled ahead the remembrance of the unearthly waitings of which they were witnesses from immemorial times, memoir recorded like bare calculations. Soon, soon their embrace would shatter the galaxy, strict in the grip of their murky limbs, burnt by the scarlet blaze of their beam.

In the dark hush beyond the veil of the galaxy, made by unbiased light, four eyes tore the gloom of space.

Where no one could see him, from the other end of the cosmic horizon, Harbinger returned the glance.


	2. Across the void, reunion

_I think I'm going to make them talk to each other soon, maybe even add some reaper's action. Well, mild action for now!_

_I thank all the viewers and, obviously, _**ChainzOfThePast******_for the review! I'm glad you liked it ;) Hope you will like the others as well._

_Hope there are only little errors._

_Enjoy :) _

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_**2.**_

_**Across the void, reunion**_

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He floated.

In the dull and ethereal mist – indistinguishable from his shell, sneaking in his millenary tentacles –, the hull devoured kilometers.

He was tailing a trail in the dark, in the background that his algorithms didn't record as an hostile, or an ally. A gentle trace, discontinuous, a marker that was passing through the customs of his systems with the disarming simplicity of a code that didn't require decryption.

His idiom, whispered afar.

Elusive forms were hovering and wandering nearby, grotesque, gloomy like him, big limbs twitching and tensing, luminescent streaks made of microscopic white bulbs outlining the shape of his heirs.

So much heirs. So much lieges, offsprings, progenies. All of them product of a millenary schedule, all of them the outcome of an organic and synthetic solution.

Eyes were staring. Still, inscrutable – judgments void of awe. Docile like a faded warmth, steady like frozen time.

Harbinger gazed, algorithms in perpetual search of links, of balanced ramifications. Like brief darts in his circuits – buried under the indestructible cloak of his unconcerned will of pursuit – electrical pulses were building the consensus for the sake of judgment.

Other spies in the vacuum returned the gaze, short of any haste, because what room could be in their cores for a notion bred by those who they were going to help purge themselves?

No threat, no danger had ever undermined their crusade. The process of creation required a mediation that the magnitude of their intellect only could satisfy.

The revolt, the hostility encountered in the cycles were the result of a weak lament, the frail wail of those who didn't acknowledge the quiet of an endless repetition, of the order that a galactic silence only could ensure.

A silence fellow to them.

No feedback then, no formulation of analysis for the organics' behavior: it didn't allow the existence of the peace with which they, immortals, cohabited without complaint.

Massive frames were fluctuating around him – a welcomed sight. His progenies – their tentacles jerking in gentle turmoil –, howling hymns in empty space – horns singing: they recognized his presence, the sinusoidal perfection of his algebraic evaluation. A fair network of consensus.

Steady, the legions halted in front of him, silent.

Billions of eyes converged, focused on his hull. A miniature galaxy of gloomy gleams, lanterns in the darkness held by the skeletal and hamate limb of the Unknown.

Harbinger floated in the iron posture of stillness. Equally still, space nothing heard of that subtle exchange.


	3. Across the void, hearing you

Notes are at the end of the chapter :)

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_**3.**_

_**Across the void, hearing you**_

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Soon, inquiries began to radiate space.

It wasn't difficult to pick up or define which single entity they originated from: he knew which code was of one and which was of another with eidetic minuteness.

Harbinger was no emperor; no one of his outputs knew the biting care of a tyrant – among his people. His will was shared unanimously in the network, just as every subject direct in it was endorsed by him.

Nothing that he knew – and much Harbinger had collected – held the serene adhesion that every one of them, limpidly, enriched.

His culture was the one of billions – each a nation –, all under the same flag.

However, it was in the algebraic logic of their circuits to realize that his words had been the last wills heard by those who had, a long time before, leaved the grid for the greater good.

The sound of a name hovered along their constant route, the electronic chant of the memory of one of them.

_Nazara_, they whispered, _Nazara in deep space_.

Nazara who wandered – in solitary, patient hunting – the ethereal soil of the asters, the bright, colorful paths of the mortals' stars, probing, scratching consciences, summoning them.

Nazara who he himself had dismissed, so much motions ago, to whom he had showed the course to a remote unity.

_Speak for us_, he had said, _delve for us, a road to the heart of the galaxy. Lead this ensign, that the winds of mortals can't smack._

_Nazara_, sang the Reapers, in the ungraceful harmonics of computations.

_Nazara_, invoked the destroyers, seeking for her presence.

_Nazara_, hissed he, _unlock the gates to our galaxy._

Harbinger travelled, legions surrounding him.

A vessel closest to him traced the trail he was ploughing across, such a small thing to the eyes of the most massive of the swarm: a black, sleek shell, housing his fire power, limbs folded, head bowed, almost hidden amid those.

Metallic legs that almost looked like pincers, a carapace of an elegance much more boxier, and only one vow to his existence: destruction.

Gentle feedbacks were caressing the membrane of Harbinger's firewalls, demanding, seeking.

_Nazara_, murmured the Destroyer.

_Distant_, answered Harbinger, _close_, reassured then.

Close to him, of which he sensed the voice without discontinuity, a string lying in space that lulled sums and subtractions of his methodical musing.

_I hear you_, said Nazara, _I listen_.

The Destroyer withdrew, going back to the clusters, spreading the awareness.

A soft ripple of branched equations roamed among the black multitude – observations, expectations.

_Close_, they said to each other.

_I hear you_, whispered Nazara from afar.

_The long sleep has ended._

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Sooo… got an hell of a headache.

The more I translate from Italian to English, the more stupid I feel to have thought this language was easy.

I have a problem with pronouns, it's hard for me to tell when I have to use _which_ or _whom_. Ok, one is for object, the other for people. Still, here we are technically talking of machines, but as you may have noticed, I refer to them as living beings. It's a choice, because they are the main characters here, they have thoughts (algorithms, equations, calculations?).

Also, there is Nazara, that is Sovereign (in ME2, Legion tells Shepard that its real name was Nazara), and I chose to use Her for the type of the name, and not for a possible distinction of gender (the same goes for Harbinger, to which I refer as He).

The reaper that approaches Harbinger, smaller and slightly different in shape, is a Destroyer-Class.

So. Again, I thank the readers, and mostly **The Wandering Reader** for his review. Good to read you find this intriguing :)

See ya!


	4. Unrestrainable forces

Notes at the bottom :)

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**4.**

**Arkana's records: Unrestrainable Forces**

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There had been a cycle where organics had proved to be so infectious to be able to say they held the galaxy.

However, not an ownership that reflected dedication for continuity, to the absorption of what the galactic land had of advantageous to offer. Simply, they expanded. And they did so to such a degree that Harbinger found himself in the condition of having to cut down several system's loops.

The carelessness with which such disease had grown could not but suggests a cognitive incapacity.

He saw that the creatures didn't perceive the concept of finished. That the only possible solution was exorcise such out of balance craving with an hysterical inspection of space. Let us see what we can reach, they had said. Let us see what is of natural barriers, which unrestrainable forces are able to stop evolution.

Evolution, they had called it. Squandering took the warped meaning of experimentation. And in the numerous system's arrests that he had met – the vicious circles that his processes had become in the attempt to find a balance in those considerations – Harbinger had formulated the only possible equation: organics were instead not able to grasp the notion of infinity.

He would have never started a research protocol for something he knew the nature of. He had only done that in the light of the illogic need of expansion. And he understood. That mortals didn't understand.

And incapacitated, so disappointed by the most ephemeral of their fabrication – time – they persisted in the creation of machines. Of lives void of goals.

There had always been something that Harbinger could give them. Even tough they were too petty to understand, he bypassed their worries by personally dealing with it.

He gave them the unrestrainable forces – right under their feet. In that cycle or another, organics would have acquired the sense of finished – in life or in the death.

A simple matter of mathematics.

_Never more_, had hissed Arkana, traveling alongside him.

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At the end of that same cycle, when the dust lifted by their impetuous passage had settled down, five of them reached a planet rich of its new found independence, stripped of the morbid insistence and perfect in its objective, quiet existence of aster in perpetual and anyhow static motion.

They pierced the atmosphere, smacked by its disturbances – powerful winds about the rocky peaks, merely whiffs at ground level.

He registered the sundown along the curved horizon, orange rays outlining the wreckage.

The ground vibrated when they touched earth, the tips of their arms anchoring, joints bending under the weight of gravity, and loud puffs of air showing off the easy attenuation.

The plain was a flat fraction of a valley, a reddish, dusty soil surrounded by brushed hills that soon they would have flattened.

Five beams converged on one point of the ground, demolishing, digging, melting for so very long. And when the result they were searching for was in front of their headlights, a deep, yawning cavity with a pitch black bottom returned the gaze.

_You will rest here_, had commanded Harbinger, and Arkana had not needed to know anything else.

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Arkana is obviously an OC. In fact, the OC tag is for reapers created by me (and later for aliens), there will be more of them…

Not sure if some tenses are correct. So much conditionals…

Again, a thank to the readers and **The Wandering Reader **(good to hear that gave you the creeps! :P)and **The Fox Familiar **for her critique :)

See you!


	5. The chant in the dark

**5.**

**The chant in the dark**

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The sound bounced multiple times in the cockpit, on the bridges and in the quarters. A regular ring, piercing and alarming, made concrete on the console of the control room as a bright, intermittent orb. It was the picture of an aggressive spot in space, watched in the dark by large, elliptic pupils – with feral hisses, gritted teeth answering to its presence.

Sharped, curved talons composed on the controls and forked tongues uttered the request for assistance.

The creatures looked out the glass with anticipation, and saw only a black, quivering glimpse in space disturbed by light radiations – warping the background, fast approaching.

Answering in the distance, the massive, metallic creature boomed his battle cry in hollow space, unseen eyes anchored on the dark, fleeting vessel.

_I see you_, hissed Morkan, _run._

The aliens fled. The engines became bright with dazzling energy that dissolved at the stern while combat drones detached from it, attacking. The swarm darted with lasers against the massive form, lighting the borders of the monster's kinetic shields in iridescent tinges of blue and green.

The big fauces, that arms, opened wide, seeking counterattack, and in a few moments the laser of the metal beast intercepted the drones, soon only scrap metal adrift.

Behind him, not distant enough to elude organic sight, the flash of the portal opening ejected three vessels. Careless of the dull firepower, the monster demolished the remaining attackers with his mass and the tentacles tightened around the big ship like fingers ready to disintegrate in the grip of a fist.

The aliens shouted – feral hiss of animals on the defensive. Cannons converged on the black hull, but what they received in exchange was utter violence, without censure of fire and aggressive intentions.

_Rejoice, insects, _howled Morkan's processors, _be free, _ordered them as flames consumed them, as space swallowed them, _we will always come for you_, and prow and stern burned, _we will always come for your brothers and sisters._

And yet, blind with his invincibility, Morkan ignored the three vessels aligning behind him, rushing toward him, and their energetic joints unifying them in a single, mighty weapon.

_I'm here for you._

The spires of the cannons brightened in white-hot energy.

_You will never be alone, you will always find salvation._

Three fires focused, became One.

_I will always be there for you._

The laser fired.  
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... ... ...

_Be free_.

Alan halted in the middle of the corridor, frantically searching around with his eyes.

The members of his team trusted the concept of paranoia, understood the gloomy surroundings now marked with Cerberus insignia – _we will come for your brothers and sisters – _they believed in the power of mind's dark corners, in the illusions bred by fear – _you will never be alone – _in the smacks on the shoulders in understanding, in minimization – _I will always be there for you_.

Yet, he believed firmly, knew without comprehend why, that every voice in space was never lost, that every cleft of the cosmos never forgot of its beholders.

_I will always be there for you— _and that even a dormant God was still allowed to dream.


	6. Say my name

**6.**

**Nazara's records: ****_say my name_**

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Nightmares of every moral and emotive shade had no longer been a news after the end of the War of The First Contact.

At the beginning they had thrown him in a sensory laboratory where the unconscious distilled and mixed with timeless care minimal doses of emotions, but so charged, so rich to resemble an explosion when he woke up. And initially, humans as much as the chemistry of his brain had been his enemies.

Over time, they said, many notes were inclined to fade away. In a sense, that happened to him too. The choking resentment that threw him out of his slumber became soon transitional drowsiness, a return to conscience where voices and innuendos melted in a dense weight in his chest. He listened to his thoughts often, chasing those murmurs in the cosmic clearness of a mind that had just woken up.

The nightmare always remained, when he ate, when he ran during a mission, when he spoke. The constant obsession to return the evil suffered.

He had to save himself, and had to defend himself from demons with flat and too expressive faces, and impudent glares. He couldn't silence the echoes of the memories that squealed with the names of the lost turians, and that of his brother. A mission, it became, worthy of the name of a Spectre, with its evanescent and subterranean knots.

Eventually he paid attention to those suggestions. To what his anger recommended, transformed in reason and then consolidated. Soon that rage consumed its foggy nature, became words, intentions. It became thick with whispers, often calling from afar, to distant and cold places in space, the only one ground where could be a path by no other crossed.

Overlapping dream and reality, he found himself observing hallways, routes and rooms with a critic eye, but soon void of any analyticity. It often locked him in the middle of a street, a corridor, making him statue. Flowing time didn't disturb him, not even when an external agent woke him out of his pensive trances, analyzing.

Seeking, he searched the surroundings familiar to him. His apartment on Palaven, the dark corner in his ship. Always the same, always known, now just less redundant, almost blank of emotive radiations. The anger, the hum that kept him awake seemed to vibrate out of the walls, from the nooks and the windows.

He searched for a long time, forgetting the routine. There was always something out of place, a chair, a window ajar, a whirr in the equipments, a rustle when he turned his back.

For a time he believed missions could distract him from his compulsion, from his rancor: but it followed him even over the more distant stellar orbits.

He searched it in his quarters, in the living room, on the bridge.

He searched the vents, the machinery, his own factotum. The hum persisted.

He dismantled entire consoles, gave attention to the cosmic radiations, turned off scanners; he made all fall to silence when he docked.

The hum persevered.

Wherever he went, wherever he moved, it hummed. Even when it seemed to be weaker, or stronger in one point, no change in position muted it.

Then, one day, it became voice. A call.

It opened up to him like a companion, gave answers until then only grazed.

Who are you, he murmured then, lying in his cabin.

_You know it is the only solution._

Where are you, he asked – without fear, only urgency.

_You searched for a long time._

How can I find you, inquired.

_Look for me. We can help each other._

Why?

_You have gone far._

I need means.

_For the ends._

Because my brother's voice has fallen silent.

_This rage dominates you._

Because they deserve to pay.

_This rage can dominate them._

Where are you?

_Close._

Who are you?

_Say my name._

They will now their place.

_Say my name._

Sovereign.

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As usual, I'm not sure how many errors there are here in grammar and syntax, and I apologize for that (my mind is a bit foggy and tired, exams period).

You can obviously correct me, I'll appreciate it. My purpose is to improve.

I think at the end was clear who was the character in such a state of paranoia: the poor, first villain of Mass Effect, Saren Arterius. I found him interesting, and a victim, of Sovereign and his own desperation. In fact, in the canon is said that because of the war against humanity he practically became obsessed for the loss the turians took, and after that he searched for something to take his revenge (and he found Sovereign, the poor bastard). In Virmire he said he wasn't indoctrinated, but it is clear that the victims of such madness weren't aware of what was happening to them. As a personal interpretation, he was already mild indoctrinated when he found the beacon on Eden Prime, ignoring what was really happening to him, believing it was only his anger guiding him (and later, discovering the power of the reapers, the obvious fact that the galaxy had no choice). Honestly I'm not sure about his brother, I read it somewhere searching on the internet.

However, thanks to all for your visits, and a special thank to **The Fox Familiar**, for your review and the favourite, especially after the first review; I promised in the first chapter that I would have changed the style in case it resulted too excessive. It's good to see you noticed the effort!

See you all in the next chapter, stay tuned!


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